Deadly Doubles

Chapter Eight

The scream brought Nancy’s friends running. They froze, appalled, their eyes following the direction of Nancy’s pointing finger.

There was a message, but it hadn’t come by phone and hadn’t been left with the front desk. It lay in the center of Nancy’s bed in the tightly locked suite.

It was a doll, an eight-inch redheaded doll with a teenage figure, dressed in an abbreviated blue bikini. The doll’s head lolled sickeningly to one side. A red cord was knotted around the broken neck.

A note was attached, written with a blood-red marker:

go home, señorita.

this could be you!

Nancy recovered quickly and approached the bed as Bess dove for the phone.

Bess frantically punched numbers, then spoke in a rush. “Dan! Get back up here fast!” She dropped the receiver with a clatter that made them all jump.

“So he just happened to give me his beeper number,” Bess said with a forced smile as Nancy eyed her. “It’s a good thing he did.” She reached out toward the broken doll.

“Don’t touch it!” Nancy jerked Bess’s hand away. “There may be fingerprints.”

Footsteps came pounding down the corridor. “They sure didn’t waste time waiting for the elevator,” George commented, opening the door carefully with her hand wrapped in a section of her skirt so she wouldn’t leave prints.

All at once the room was full of very stern plainclothes detectives. Dan borrowed Nancy’s small camera to take pictures as his friend Joe phoned for reinforcements. The girls weren’t allowed to touch anything in the room until a fingerprint expert had arrived. When he came, FBI agents were with him.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Nancy demanded when the fingerprint man refused even to let her sit on the edge of the bathtub.

“If you have any sense, you’ll go back home,” Dan told her flatly. “This is no mess for nice girls like you to be mixed up in.”

“Teresa’s mixed up in this mess,” Nancy replied with conviction. “I’m not leaving until she’s out of it. There has to be some way I can help her! And I’m not going home until Senator Kilpatrick has that hit list in her hands!”

She turned to her friends. “There’s no reason you have to stay here, though. Why don’t you phone home? I’m sure Dan can find someone to take you to the airport.”

“No way!” George said gruffly as Bess nodded loyally.

“All for one and one for all?” Nancy whispered. “Thanks, guys.”

“There’s one thing you are going to do, whether you like it or not,” Dan said, reaching for the phone as the fingerprint expert finished with it. “I’m under orders to protect you, so I’m moving you out of these rooms. I happen to know the government’s paid the hotel to keep the rooms on either side of Teresa’s empty,” he added as he punched the button for the hotel manager.

Nancy was about to protest, but she stopped abruptly. That location would be perfect! Within minutes, the three detectives were helping the girls carry overnight bags up the emergency stairs.

“No one will know you’re in here,” Dan said with satisfaction as soon as he’d checked out the new two-bedroom suite. “I told the manager we’re using these rooms for a stakeout. We’ll move the rest of your things up tomorrow. In the meantime, you can lie low.” He thumped the pillows on the living-room sofa. “And I’ll spend the night right here to make sure nobody bothers you.”

Nancy nodded silently. She had her own plans in mind-plans that would be blown if Dan spent the night on the sofa. He’d see her leaving the suite.

Then her brow cleared as a thought struck her. If this suite was set up like the one they’d just left…

“I’d really like to freshen up,” Nancy said demurely. “Did anyone bring a blow-dryer?”

“I think I brought mine,” said Bess, picking up her bag.

“Let’s get everything sorted out in here,” Nancy said, leading the way to the far bedroom and firmly closing the door.

“What was that all about?” George demanded suspiciously.

Nancy put her finger to her lips. “Turn on the dryer,” she whispered. “I don’t want Dan to hear us.” Then, followed by George and Bess, she tiptoed straight to the phone. She punched the number of Teresa’s room.

On the second ring, Teresa answered, her voice a tight whisper.

“It’s Nancy. Are you alone?”

“No, but Señora Ramirez is asleep in the other room,” Teresa replied softly.

“Well, I’m in the room on the other side of you. We just moved in here. As soon as I put down the receiver I’ll unlock the connecting door on my side. You lock the door between you and Señora Ramirez and come in here.”

In less than a minute, Teresa stood in the connecting doorway. Her eyes were swollen with weeping, and she looked very frail in her thin nightdress. “Have you heard any more about Roberto?” she asked immediately.

Nancy hurried her inside. “We have to talk softly. Our bodyguard’s in the room just outside this door. Didn’t the government assign anyone to guard you?”

Teresa shook her head. “Now that Roberto’s dead, they think I’m not important to the assassins,” she said simply.

“I’m not so sure.” Nancy sat on the bed opposite Teresa and took her hands. “I want you to think very hard. Tell me everything you can remember about Roberto’s movements from the moment you arrived in Washington.”

Bess flicked the record button on the little cassette player she often brought along on trips. George took the memo pad and ballpoint pen from the bedside table.

Teresa stared at the connecting door as if it were a TV screen on which she was watching a documentary of her journey. “So much was new-I have never been out of my own country before, so I remember-the plane came in-”

“Which airport?” Nancy asked quickly.

“I don’t know. Near here-there was a lot of traffic, and we could see the dome on your Capitol.” National Airport, Nancy thought. Good. It was only a mile or two away.

“We come out of the plane into a corridor like a tube. Then we go through a waiting area-we don’t stop at all-and down a wide corridor with windows. Then we come to Immigration. They ask a lot of questions about why are we here, and stamp our passports. The man was nice,” Teresa said with some surprise. “He wished me luck in my tournament.”

“Then what?” Nancy asked.

Teresa described a routine the girls all recognized. Down an escalator. Waiting endlessly for luggage to be unloaded. Finding luggage carts and suitcases-and, in Teresa’s case, tennis rackets. Then the long ordeal of Customs inspection. The inspectors had been very thorough with Teresa and Roberto and Señora Ramirez. They had taken away the fruit Teresa had brought with her and the flowers she’d been given at the San Carlos airport.

Then the party had gone into the main lobby. They had not yet separated at all, not even to go to the rest rooms. At that point, Teresa said, Roberto had noticed how much Señora Ramirez’s feet were hurting and had suggested she sit down.

All at once Nancy’s ears perked up. “Where did Roberto leave Señora Ramirez?” she asked breathlessly.

“He left both of us,” Teresa corrected her, “and went to find out about the car we had arranged to rent. It took him a long time, I think, but-”

“Did he go anywhere else?”

Teresa frowned. “I do not think so. It was a very long day,” she confessed. “We had been traveling since dawn.”

Nancy jumped up, her eyes shining. At last there was something she could do. “Bess, go into the sitting room and turn on the charm,” she commanded. “We’re going to the airport, and we’d better have Dan with us!”

“What? The airport now?” George said. “Why, Nancy?”

“I have a hunch that Roberto may have left the list there somewhere-and I want to find it before anyone else does!”

In a few minutes Nancy, Bess, George-and Dan-were in Dan’s car, with Dan at the wheel. Apparently Bess had been very persuasive. Teresa had begged to go with them, but when Nancy had reminded her of her tournament match the next day, she had returned reluctantly to her own room.

Dan’s small station wagon reassured Nancy. So did his own brawny presence. No one would connect him or his car with San Carlos or with Nancy Drew-particularly since Nancy was wearing Bess’s sundress and George’s battered baseball cap, both brought by Dan from the downstairs room.

Then why, Nancy asked herself as they rolled up the exit ramp from the parking garage, do I suddenly feel as if something’s about to happen?

She found out all too soon. As the station wagon turned into the street and headed for the corner, a car parked near the curb came quietly to life. It pulled in behind them as they halted for the stop sign-then turned left just as Dan did.

“We’re being followed,” Nancy said quietly.